paper trail

May 15, 2012 @ 12:24:00 am

Last night the New York Public Library hotsted its ceremony for the Young Lions Award. After Sloane Crosley and Billy Crudup read excerpts by the five finalists, the top honor was presented to Swampladia! author Karen Russell (she is in Berlin, so her brother accepted in her place). Swamplandia was also one of the finalists for this year's much-dicussed Pulitzer Prize.

How did the new owner of the Harvard Book Store figure out a way to compete with Amazon and “solve consumer’s expectations for instant gratification and delivery”? Answer: He installed an Espresso Book Machine, so that when books aren’t available in the store, they can be printed and bound, on the spot, for customers.

John Cheever would be turning 100 on May 27. To celebrate, Random House is releasing an updated edition of Cheever’s iconic red doorstop, Stories of John Cheever. For an introduction to the book, here’s T.C. Boyle on his own experience reading it, and what it was like to take Cheever’s class at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

How do publishers commission current events books? An editor at Yale University Press explains.

How much of David Sedaris’s monologues are real and how many are “realish”? The Mike Daisey scandal has NPR wondering—and wondering if the question matters when it comes to humor writers.

In just about two weeks the Getty Research Institute will launch a new online art historical database with access to over twenty thousand titles. It will be open to anybody—not just professional academics or art historians.

Jeanette Winterson will return to her hometown to take up a new gig as a professor of creative writing at Manchester University. The position, which involves teaching undergrads and grad students, has previously been held by Martin Amis and Colm Tóibín.